


A World Without Dragons

by frostmrajick



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Post-How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Some suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 11:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18636919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostmrajick/pseuds/frostmrajick
Summary: The dragons have left, and Hiccup is having a hard time dealing with it. Astrid is getting worried.





	1. Chapter 1

Only days after the dragons leave, he is seeming distant. She understands. She’s grieving, too. They all are. They are in a meeting, and he is barely paying attention. He shakes his head and says he can’t. She steps in—she is hurt, but she knows his bond with Toothless was something special, and she will help him however she can.  
  
He goes to the cliff, staring out as though looking for sight of his dragon. She places a hand on his shoulder, leans against him. “I know,” she whispers.  
“Yeah,” he replies, putting a hand to his forehead.  
  
But it gets better and it gets worse. She gets better, and he gets worse.  
  
She wakes in the middle of the night, and he’s not there. He’s out on the cliff. He’s working on his wings. Sometimes he talks about flying out to the hidden world, and she knows he knows the wings alone wouldn’t carry him so far. But he doesn’t seem to be talking to her. He barely seems aware that she exists.  
  
Still, she could manage that. He keeps staying at the edge, telling everyone that he has to be there when Toothless returns, he won’t be able to find him. He gets frantic when they try to pull him away, even when they try to reason with him.  
  
She’s getting frustrated by this point. He’s not acting like a chief. He’s not acting like he’s even aware of anyone, much less cares about them. She has to take over, and she has no patience for him. “We’re all sad!” she exclaims. “We all lost our dragons! We’re managing! He needs to get over himself and grow up!”  
  
She’s angry, but she’s also worried.  
  
There’s a day when they find him on a Viking ship on fire. As they rush to put it out, he sits near her, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to,” he says.  
  
His mother talks to him like a child, and he admits that it was a Viking funeral pyre.  
  
Astrid doesn’t understand at first. And then she does. And she can’t handle that.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I didn’t mean to.”  
  
“You did.”  
  
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t—I—“  
  
“What, Hiccup? What is wrong with you lately? You’re sad about the dragons? Guilty that you sent them away? What? I’m your wife, talk to me.”  
  
“I don’t know,” he replies, and he looks like he honestly doesn’t.  
  
“Just…don’t again, okay?” she begs. “Please.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“Why did you?”  
  
“I…” He wraps his arms around himself and lowers his head. He looks so hurt and sad. “It just hurts.”  
  
“I know. All of us feel it. But we have to keep going. You especially, being the chief.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
He tries, but it’s not long before he’s struggling all over again. He barely talks to her anymore.  
  
He jumps off the edge of the cliff, and she finds him in the water, and she thinks he’s tried to kill himself again, but no, he has his wings, he was trying to fly. He curls around himself on the boat back, looking…something beyond sad.  
  
“I’m pregnant,” she tells him.  
  
He doesn’t react at first. Then he sits up slowly. “What?”  
  
“I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a child.”  
  
He tries again. And when their daughter is born, he tries even harder. She can tell he is trying, that it is a struggle. Just holding his daughter is a chore. He smiles, but his gaze is in the distance. She hates that. She hates him sometimes. But she still loves him. She starts appointing others to help—today’s her day, but tomorrow’s Gobber’s, then his mother’s. She needs a break sometimes, so that she can keep loving him.  
  
He barely talks. His mother finds him on the cliff, sitting there, without his prosthetic, and she realizes that he’s crawled the whole way. He doesn’t have the energy to put on his prosthetic, but he still has to come to this place.  
  
She has another child, a son, and he brightens again, but it’s still so little. Her daughter—it’s hard sometimes to think of him as a parent—is only four and has already learned that she needs to keep an eye on her father, that she needs to parent him. Make sure he doesn’t fly off the cliff, make sure he eats, make sure he gets out of bed but doesn’t go too far.  
  
“Eat breakfast, honey,” Astrid tells Hiccup as he pokes at it blankly. “For me?” she tries, and he finally takes a bite. She relaxes slightly and kisses his forehead. “Thank you.” There are moments, when she can see that he does love her, and his children, when he plays with them or smiles at her and she can see the man he could have been.  
  
She tells Zephyr to look after her father today while she does her chiefing duties. “Other kids don’t have to watch their dads,” she argues.  
  
“Then you can go join another family,” Astrid replies. She’s a lot like her mother, and Astrid talks like it. This is a conversation they’ve had many times. She leans over Hiccup, touching his face. “I’ll have to ask Gobber to give you a haircut and shave soon. Nuffink, put your boots on today, it’s cold.”  
  
“I watch daddy!” Nuffink declares. For some reason, even though Zephyr’s had more good moments with their father, their son completely adores him. He likes to sit close and scribble while Hiccup draws. He gets frustrated and irritated with his father, but he at least tolerates him more than anyone else it seems.  
  
“You’re too little, honey.” Zephyr is pouting, but she’s not arguing or running away, so that’s good. “Maybe he’ll draw with you later, though.” She watches Hiccup for some input to this suggestion, but sees nothing. That’s all she ever sees.  
  
Something has to change.


	2. Finding Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He comes alive on the boat."
> 
> Astrid and Hiccup take their children to see the dragons.

He comes alive on the boat. He laughs, and she thinks it’s been years since she heard that laugh. He shows his children how to work the boat and he runs around and plays with them. This is different than the last week, when everything was tinged with ‘I’m doing this because I have to.’ He wants to. He can. He has been dead for years, but now he’s alive. He holds Astrid and teases her, and she is falling in love with him all over again.  
  
“Hiccup,” she says as they lay entwined in bed together after a night of laughter and lovemaking. “Now you’re talking to me. Can you tell me? About the last few years?”  
  
He doesn’t reply at first, and she can feel everything descending. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I’m sorry. I really don’t. I just—I want to talk. I love you, and I want to be there with you, with the kids. But everything hurts and I’m so tired.” He pauses, then adds, “I don’t want to be like I am.”  
  
“Then don’t,” she says desperately, like it’s that easy. “Tell me how to help.”  
  
“I don’t know, though.” He sighs in frustration and helplessness. “I know it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even to me. Like when I’m so tired, but I have to go the cliff, and I know it’s stupid, but my legs walk without me.”  
  
“That doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“I know it doesn’t.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”  
  
She leans against him. “It will be okay.” In this moment, heading to see the dragons they left behind years ago, it seems true.


	3. Fathers and Sons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He goes to the door. Don’t say it, he thinks. Don’t ask for me, and I won’t have to come. I can go back to bed. Or maybe go to the cliff. He could sit there and just not be. Wait for Toothless, or fly, or fall. Any of the above."
> 
> Hiccup tries to be a father.

“Come play with me!” Nuffink shouts, leaping up onto their bed. “Daddy, come play!”  
  
Hiccup pauses, trying to find it in him. He wants to. He wants to be his son’s father. But he can’t. “I’m tired right now,” he says. They’ve explained to their children. Daddy’s not like other daddies. He feels sad, but not like a normal sad, and sometimes he’s really tired. He still loves you, and he wants to play with you, and he’s going to try very hard to be a good daddy, but sometimes it’s hard, and he might not be able to. It’s not your fault, and he’ll feel better later.  
  
Ruffink cuddles against him, and Hiccup makes himself hold his son. His body doesn’t want to even do that, but he makes it. He needs to do at least that.  
  
“Can we draw?” Ruffink asks.  
  
“Not right now,” Hiccup murmurs.  
  
“Okay. Maybe later?”  
  
“Maybe.” Hiccup doesn’t believe it. He kisses his son. “Go on and play.”  
  
“Okay.” Ruffink clambors out of bed and races outside. Hiccup wishes he had just a spoonful of his energy and joy.  
  
He did, once. He doesn’t know what happened. The dragons left—Toothless left, but also, all the dragons. And his father was dead, and now he became chief. And that was a lot. Then he became a father, and that helped for awhile, but then it became one more thing to get tangled up inside of him. And it all adds up to, he doesn’t know who he is anymore.  
  
He forces himself up and to the window. He watches the children play, and he imagines himself, imagines a world where he’s out there, with them. That’s how it should be. That’s what they deserve, what Astrid deserves.  
  
He puts a hand to his face, trying to hold himself together. It hurts. Thinking about this hurts so much, he wants to die.  
  
But it helps, figuring out what this is. It helps to pull him out of it, to give him some distance.  
  
He doesn’t want to die. Because then he wouldn’t be with his family. He doesn’t know if it would help or hurt them. He knows it hurt him when his own father died, but his father—while they had had their disagreements—was always more than him. So maybe he’s selfish for wanting them, but he does.  
  
He goes to the door. Don’t say it, he thinks. Don’t ask for me, and I won’t have to come. I can go back to bed. Or maybe go to the cliff. He could sit there and just not be. Wait for Toothless, or fly, or fall. Any of the above.  
  
He opens the door. He watches his children play for a moment, thinking my son, my son, my son. And my dad.  
  
Ruffink notices him, and his face lights up as he runs to his father. “Daddy!” He leaps into Hiccup’s arms, and Hiccup smiles and sweeps him up. “Are you coming to play?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so,” Hiccup says.  
  
“You’re not too tired?”  
  
“I’m tired,” Hiccup admits. “But I’m never too tired for you.”  
  
Ruffink laughs his joy and claps his hands. “Daddy plays with me!”


End file.
